Afghans bury dead after illegal weapons cache blast

Afghans buried their dead and surveyed the wreckage of their houses in the remote northern village of Bashgah today – a day after a devastating explosion in the home of an anti-Taliban warlord killed about 26 people.

Officials said an illegal weapons cache caused the blast, highlighting the danger from arms piled up in a quarter-century of war and the task of disarming commanders wary of rivals and the country’s US-backed government.

President Hamid Karzai said he was saddened by the incident, one of the deadliest since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, and ordered an investigation.

But the local commander defended himself today, saying a stock of explosives destined for a road project had unexpectedly ignited, and that he was in the process of handing over his last weapons to the government’s supervision.

The blast early on Monday morning flattened half a dozen homes and damaged a mosque in the hamlet in Baghlan province, 75 miles north of Kabul, as residents were returning home from prayer.

On Tuesday, residents were still picking body parts from the debris as stony-faced relatives buried the body of a two-year-old girl on a nearby hillside.

Two small feet with red-painted nails protruded from a shroud of raw cotton as several men lowered her into the damp earth next to 23 other fresh graves, each marked with a stone.

The girl’s father, among dozens injured in the explosion, was being treated at the province’s only hospital.

Some residents seethed against warlord Jalal Bashgah, who was in a nearby town at the time of the blast, and arrived in the village this morning to inspect the aftermath.

“Why did he have to keep explosives and ammunition in his house, which was so close to everyone else?” said one of several man who blamed the commander. “He is responsible for a very bad thing.”

Bashgah’s immediate family also lived elsewhere, but the family of his two brothers living in his compound were mostly killed.

Bashgah said there were 190 pounds of explosives and three crates of gunpowder in the basement for use improving the rough road along the valley.

He said there was also “some” ammunition as well – indicated by the spent shell cases littering the blast site. He said he’d already surrendered to the UN programme a much larger cache dating back to the resistance against Soviet forces in the 1980s.

Disposal activities of the UN, US and Nato, who report the discovery of weapons caches almost daily, have netted a vast arsenal, though UN officials estimate there are many thousands of tons more scattered across the country.

Accidents with old ordnance have inflicted many casualties on Afghans, including children and farmers, and foreign troops.

In January 2004, eight US soldiers died when a cache of arms they were preparing for disposal exploded prematurely.

Bashgah, looking exhausted as he stood beside the mosque, said he was unconcerned about the accusations against him, and suggested enemies, perhaps Taliban saboteurs, had set off the explosion to kill him.

“I have lost so many members of my family here,” he said. “What else are they going to do to me?”